Keith and Cenk left MSNBC. They uncovered the stories beyond the allowable corporate dictum. And these two became marginalized from cable television and a larger viewership. I was up on a friend’s farm in Squamish, B.C., Canada a long time ago while I was living in the area doing organ transplants down in a lab at a university in Vancouver. My friend and I met up with Little Richard at the QE II Theatre while we were all taking in Miles Davis (he being no less than perfect). We got to talking and, as it turned out, we invited Little Richard to use the farm that summer to put on a concert. While we were all standing in the kitchen just before he went out to do his thing, I remember him saying, staying in that fabulous showman character of his, “Yeah, man, I’m Little Richard. And where you’re at, I’ve been.”

He had been castigated by most TV producers as too radical to air. They were beholden to corporate ownership and big money deals with advertisers as well as admonishments from some congressional people who were concerned about promoting anything that might be considered remotely anti-war-establishment.

Maybe it’s the Saturday coffee, a Fred Klonsky morning reverie thing. I’m not sure why I’m sharing this. But I just read Diane Ravitch’s blog with Pelto. Our voices are being bought up. Like Little Richard, an icon of R&B and Rock & Roll, like many of the other famous entertainers who spoke truth to power, they who could command large audiences, their voices dimmed into the background of time. Sure, time and popularity counts. But the message of freedom became a primary target of the elitist overclass. By the time we slipped into the late 70s, protesting truth to power became a thing of the past, at least in the mainstream. I heard Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind” on an elevator the other day in downtown Honolulu, no less. I mean, wouldn’t you expect some slack key guitar and voices as sweet as pikake blooms?

I remember being in a Penny’s Department store and was going through their record rack. And, lo and behold, there was a vinyl of Country Joe and the Fish’s ” Electric Music for Mind and Body.” In Penny’s? The corporate ownership hadn’t even a slight grasp as to what was happening around them. I’m sure they would not have allowed such an anti-establishment album in their stores. And, likewise, the Beltway in DC has no greater understanding as to what’s going on all around them. It’s all about the money and there is little to no time to consider much else. The Beltway is a river of money, bipartisan money, combined with personal fortunes of those who are in the mutual privatization game.

We, the people, are being marginalized by big money. I saw a mention of Bill Gates and his maniacal attack on the planet as if it were his own toy land. (Kudos to S.DuFresne, I think). Then I re-read Tim Slekar ‘s FB piece on how we must push back into the faces of the Melissa Harris-Perrys, Chris Matthews, Ed Schultz, etc. Even the super hero Chris Hayes. They are just on the edge of telling the viewers how it really is, but don’t quite get there. They are not allowed to get there. They hold the corporate line that Cenk and Keith stepped over.

Okay, so now that @the ChalkFace has embarked on a furious new push to speak and act out, to revolt to the tyranny of the moneyed elite, I’m thinking…… we need people, lots of people, money, maybe even some well-healed sponsors.

The overclass has no interest in what we are yelling at them. To hell with public good, they say. The seemingly most liberal media continue to avoid an issue which subsumes all other issues: the development and education of our children in a free society. Public schools open for everyone to attend. Being the greatest public good a nation can create.

I’ve been a public educator all my life. I stand for and believe in a system of governance that includes all the people to the rights of not only free speech, but the right to housing, nutrition, medical care, public schools and universities—–gratis. Just because we are. So, like Little Richard did, we too must keep banging out the message. We are perched on a massive and revolutionary change in the collective consciousness of a population beyond CNN, beyond corporatism.